Monday, 14 July 2014

Nursery plans for the twins

by Bex

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh, today we have our 20 week scan and will find out the sex of the twins! So exciting! Regardless of the outcome, it won't change our plans at all as I'm not a fan of gender stereotypes anyway (particularly for girls), it'll just make choosing names easier! All of my nursery ideas have been gender neutral for years and our final decision is also. I originally thought I'd do a nursery in an underwater theme with my own fish and other underwater pictures on the wall with lots of aqua and bright sea life in corally colours with white. Our new plan is different but just as brightly coloured, if not more so...

So you know the twins' room will be like an attic room as it has half slanted walls and velux windows with a normal window at the end opposite the door. I plan to have the cots on either side of this end window sticking into the room along the walls. The walls will be grey and the furniture white. The colour will be added in the form of rainbow colours! Basically, as bright and cheerful as you can get :) We first decided this was probably going to be the colour scheme while in Thailand I spotted some fab fairy lights at a market and asked Nik what he thought of the idea and getting the lights (obviously much cheaper over there at about £2) and was rather surprised when he agreed! (Especially considering we were only 5-6 weeks pregnant at the time!)

I've already got lots of ideas to incorporate areas of colour. One being on the chest of drawers which can double as a changing table. I plan to get the Hemnes 8 drawer chest and change the drawer knobs to colourful ones like these from Etsy but without the pink ones, regardless of sex I am not a fan of baby pink!

I also plan to make paper poms (like the green & white ones I did for my wedding) in rainbow colours and hang them in a cluster from the ceiling. I will also be incorporating 3 of these rainbow striped paper lanterns from Tiger into the bunch as I couldn't resist them at only £1 each! I've since been back with Nik and we bought some hot air balloon shaped rainbow ones which are about 3-4" long on cocktail sticks which I plan to remove and convert them into a mobile (they're not on the website).

The big rainbow you can see above was a recent discovery made by a German company I just love, Grimm's Spiel und Holz Design! Sadly it's around £50 on Amazon so Nik won't let me buy it (hint hint Mum!) but it's a great toy for the twins as well as being a gorgeous display item for one of the shelves. It is expensive but makes a great tunnel as well as being a pretty stacking toy...

Wood is an ideal material for a baby's first sensory impressions, as it has many different sense experiences. Bacteria cannot breed on wood. This is especially true for non-varnished wood. Made sustainably in Germany by Grimm's Spiel und Holz Design, a small company who have been making natural wooden toys since 1978. All Grimm's toys are made from sustainable alder, lime, maple and cherry timbers, hand finished with non-toxic and water based stains (unvarnished), and treated with pure food-grade vegetable oil. Grimm's Spiel & Holz uses green electricity sources and minimal packaging.

I found some more of their products for sale in the UK on Love To Be Natural. Nik has agreed that the Bead Grasper looks great and is a better price but I think we'd need one for each baby and there's only 1 in stock on Amazon at £12.99 but they're £30 on ebay!

I also love the idea of having a little wigwam in the room for cosy storytime. I used to love making dens with my brother out of sheets (in fact I still love being all cosy wrapped up in a duvet and sometimes make a wee den in the bathroom where I can listen to the shower to relax) and I think an indoor tent would be totally cool! I reckon I could probably make one myself but have seen some nice ones on Etsy, it could be taken into the garden in summer as well.

I love the cloud light but it's a bit too expensive (£125). I included it as inspiration as I might find something similar for the wall. The blue cloud light is just £16 from Ikea and would tie in nicely with the rainbow theme as well as being a handy lamp next to the daybed. The rainbow ammonite is another German wooden toy (I'm obsessed with them).

So I think that's it for now, we were planning on waiting until we moved to buy all this kind of stuff but considering our closest Ikea (Croydon) will be over an hour away from the new house, we might go to the one here as it's only 10 minutes from our flat and we can leave stuff flat packed to come down in the lorry as there are quite a few pieces we want and we might also have to hire a van to do it in one trip down south. Here we can make multiple trips easily and we'll be paying for removals anyway.

TOTS100

Bex lives in the Sussex countryside with her husband and 3-year-old twins, Kalyan & Priya. She loves to write about local events and foodie finds and is a contributor at Uckfield FM and Uckfield Matters magazine.